


Interlude

by EldritchMage



Series: Logan and Rachel Osaka [4]
Category: Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:40:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3898357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchMage/pseuds/EldritchMage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hi, all. Here's Part 4 of My Logan/Rachel Osaka series. Hope you enjoy it.</p><p>After surviving the predations of Weapon X, Rachel disappears, leaving Logan to search for where and why she's gone. It takes five months, but he's finally tracked her down. That's the where. The why is going to be a little harder to sort out.</p><p>There will be angst. There will also be mayhem. Nothing's easy when you're the Wolverine.</p><p>As usual, please leave me a comment if you want to tell me what you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

 

My name’s Logan. I’m the best at a lot of things you don’t want to know about. Most of those things smell like blood and are clothed in black.

A few things I’m not so good at. Take women. Sure, I’ve known my share, even hoped to make a life with one or two. I thought I knew when they told me the truth and when they lied. My sense of smell especially knows when someone’s story is off, and I trust it to tell me when betrayal is in the air.

I never expected a woman to lie to me because of love. So when Rachel Osaka did, I didn’t pick it up.

I met Rachel a year ago. She’d ended up at the Xavier Institute for protection after her parents were assassinated. Chuck Xavier recruited me to run Rachel’s defense, and I helped her accept her mutant talents of empathy and time sensing. What started as friendship turned into more, but I nixed anything permanent. I run in a lot of the roughest spots in the world where it’s easy to pick up enemies. Enemies aren’t shy about using others to strike at a man, and I didn’t want Rachel to be a target, no matter what I wanted for myself. She was a martial arts expert, but she wasn’t a soldier, she wasn’t battle trained. So I stayed away.

Despite my caution, the worst of my enemies kidnapped us. Victor Creed, Sabretooth, kicked my ass long and hard before Rachel took the risk that gave us the upper hand. Before we fled, Rachel told Creed that she was on to Weapon X. All she wanted was to be left alone, and for that she’d hold silence about the organization that’d trained Creed as well as me.

It was naïve to think that Rachel’s offer would hold off that most covert of black ops organizations. A few months later, they came after us with a vengeance. I was imprisoned in one of the worst Weapon X detention centers and methodically tortured to within a millimeter of my life. A few cells away, Rachel languished in solitary while Creed and a pack of Weapon X torturers tried to turn me into her assassin. If they could force me to kill her, that’d remove Rachel from concern, as well as give Weapon X more hold on me – either come back to the fold or face a public trial for murdering one of the world’s wealthiest women. I kept enough of myself to break us out. Rachel kept me sane enough for us to stay ahead of our pursuers.

Then things got bad.

Victor Creed had tried to rape Rachel when he’d kidnapped us. We’d stopped the physical act, but Rachel had gotten a head full of his worst emotions. This time, she got a stronger dose, as well as a vicious beating. So when Rachel got her chance to escape, she made sure his healing factor couldn’t retaliate. Afterwards, she looked at knives so longingly that I kept close watch. Slowly, slowly, she seemed to settle, though she kept to herself at the Xavier Institute. Eventually she healed enough to go home.

I dropped her off at her grandmother’s, even stopped in to meet Rachel’s last living relative. She was a tiny Japanese lady impeccably dressed in understated cashmere and suede, the epitome of the British aristocracy whose antiques she and Rachel both loved. She welcomed me warmly, even thanked me for my care with Rachel, and I was relieved that Rachel would be in loving hands while she healed. I told Rachel that I’d stay as close as she wanted, never farther away than a phone call. Her smile was as full of gratitude and love as any I’d been graced with. I’d never been one for cell phones, but I carried one now.

Two weeks later, it was Professor Charles Xavier who called me. He asked to see me as soon as I could get to the Institute. Something told me that this was about Rachel. Sure enough, when I called her, she didn’t answer. I was in Madripoor taking care of personal business, but I was quick to wrap it up and head back to the States. Once I got to New York on the red eye, I made a straight run of it, hitting Westchester at seven in the morning. Chuck met me at the door of the mansion.

“It’s Rachel,” I said without preamble, and Chuck nodded. “What’s goin’ on?”

“I would like to understand that, too, Logan. Please, come in. There’s hot coffee in the kitchen.”

I followed Chuck’s wheelchair down the hall to the kitchen, then poured each of us a mugful. Chuck took his with a nod of thanks, and didn’t waste time on small talk.

“Mrs. Tanaka, Rachel’s grandmother, called me two days ago. She asked how Rachel was doing. Of course, I told her that Rachel had not been here since you drove her to Mrs. Tanaka’s home. She was quite upset. Apparently when Rachel told us that she would be staying at her grandmother’s, she told her grandmother that she would be staying here. Mrs. Tanaka has not seen Rachel for four days.”

“Have you looked for her with Cerebro?”

Chuck nodded. “That is the first thing I tried. But I cannot locate her, Logan. Cerebro is not infallible. There are ways for a mutant to hide from it, as apparently Rachel is doing.”

“Weapon X could block sense of her, like they did when they kidnapped her.”

“True enough. But while I dislike the fact that I cannot find her, I do not believe that this is an involuntary disappearance.”

“Something your military contacts said?”

Chuck nodded again. “I did inquire, and I do not think they are involved, Logan. They were not happy about Weapon X’s abuses in this area. The reaction I received when I questioned her disappearance was angry at best. It would have been political suicide for any part of the organization, even a renegade part, to make another attempt on Rachel. Everything I have checked points to some other explanation.”

I slumped in a chair and thought curse words at my coffee. “You mean she disappeared on her own.”

Chuck sighed. “I suspect so.”

I grimaced. “Damn. She skunked me clean. That sucks.”

“Don’t be too hard on her, Logan. I fear she has not recovered as much as she led us to believe. Guilt likely drives her rather than any desire to lie to you. She truly cherished you, if you hadn’t noticed.”

I looked away. I don’t talk about anything that personal.

“Mrs. Tanaka wants to talk to you at your earliest convenience, Logan. I suspect that she will ask you to look for Rachel. All the Institute resources are here to help you in that effort if you want them.”

“I’ll grab a shower and head out to see Mrs. Tanaka.”

“I’ll call to let her know you’re on your way.”

“Thanks.”

Mrs. Tanaka graciously received me at nine in her elegant New York City town home. We had breakfast in the garden room – a very large breakfast.

Mrs. Tanaka mustered a smile when I commented on the size of the meal. “Rachel told me how much you have to eat, Logan-san. It’s the least I can do, because I’m sure you expect me to ask you to find her.”

“Don’t need to ask, Tanaka-san. What can you tell me about her disappearance?”

When Mrs. Tanaka sipped her tea, she swallowed more worry than liquid. “Very little, I’m afraid. Her car is still here, as is all of her identification – credit card, chequebook, cell phone, anything that could reveal her whereabouts. I contacted anyone she might have confided in, but no one has heard from her. She was quite thorough.”

“Do you know if she took any cash with her?”

“I expect she did. Of course I cannot access her personal accounts, but it would be like her to have a large sum of money in reserve. She rarely used it; in fact she is hardly the one to spend money at all. But her father was like that, and she loved her father very much. She inherited his care with money as well as her mother’s and my love of antiques. There is someone who might be able to help you, if anyone can.”

“Who’s that?”

“Daniel O’Shea. He’s quite a remarkable young man. A computer geek, he calls himself. I have his number for you. He and Rachel were close. He would do quite a lot to help you find my granddaughter.”

After I left Mrs. Tanaka’s, I called Daniel and told him my name. He gave me an address and hung up.

Before long, I sat listening to old jazz in the middle of a dimly lit, New York City loft full of mountain climbing gear and enough computer equipment to power half the world’s countries. My host was a tall, wiry albino gifted with a thick Scottish accent (not the Irish one I’d expected), an electronic data feed jack embedded in his skull, and huge, spidery hands that danced over computer keyboards and consoles like a virtuoso musician stoking a beloved piano. Daniel was a mutant – Daemon was his mutant name – who communed with cyberspace the way a telepath sensed thoughts. He’d been the expertise behind Rachel’s effort to ferret out information about Weapon X, as well as her distribution net to rat out the bastards. Once I told him Rachel was missing, he plugged into his net and got all dreamy-eyed as the electrons whispered to him. In fifteen minutes, he’d amassed enough data to rival the US Library of Congress.

Unfortunately, every piece of that data told us only where Rachel wasn’t. So he dug deeper.

Daniel quickly confirmed my suspicion that Rachel had withdrawn money from an account four days ago. It hadn’t been much, but was more than enough to buy a train or bus ticket to nowhere special. He hacked into a dozen hotel reservation systems and found nothing. Six bus lines – nothing. Ten car rental firms – nothing. Airlines, taxi services, train stations – all, nothing.

“Damn,” I muttered, scratching my head. “Maybe she walked.”

Daniel’s eyes danced unseeing. Screens rolled with reservations in national parks, campgrounds, and outfitting businesses. None of them showed anything of Rachel Osaka.

Daniel and I parted with a promise to keep in touch. Then I did some hard thinking.

Had Rachel disappeared to kill herself because she felt guilty about living? Because she couldn’t live with what she’d gone through? Or had she gone into hiding because she feared that Weapon X was still gunning for her? I worked Chuck’s high-powered computers for days, searching for anything she might have touched, anyplace she might have considered a refuge. I chased everything that Daniel sent me. I harassed Chuck to look for her with Cerebro every couple of days. But I came up empty in every direction.

I kept at it for a week. Then I bagged the gigabytes, the geeks, the grandmothers, and the geniuses. I gassed up the hog and headed north. Stopped thinking, started feeling. Maybe Rachel had headed back to Canada, retracing the route we’d traveled a year ago, revisiting places where she’d been happy.

I got lucky when I went back to a bar that hadn’t changed in decades, where Rachel and I had danced to Duke Ellington and eaten rare venison steak. I snuck into the ladies’ room and caught her scent on the roller towel. This place didn’t get many women, and the help wasn’t so good at changing things like towels that rarely got used, so it was a clear scent, if old. She’d been here maybe a month before. I retraced our old trail, and when I stopped sensing her in Idaho, something indescribable sent me west.

It took five months, but I ended up in Seattle, Washington. As I doggedly showed her photo around, I learned the city real well. I prowled through the rich parts, the devastated parts, and every part in between, all without a nibble.

Then one night, in as much of a funk as I ever got into, I ended up in a seedy borough of the city, just riding through because I couldn’t sleep.

I caught her scent.

It led me to the Blue Diamond Diner. It was three in the morning and the diner was closed, but her scent was pervasive. I rode off, found a cheap flophouse, and tried to sleep.

About eleven the next morning, I parked in front of the diner with Rachel’s scent strong in my nostrils. I didn’t try to be stealthy. Rachel’s talents gave her glimpses into the future, so she’d already know I was near. I got off my hog and walked through the door.

It was a typical retro diner husk that someone had hauled off the highway years ago – worn around the edges with chrome stools, scratched turquoise Formica countertops, and tables inlaid with pearly white diamond shapes – but the food smelled good. It was cleaner than most, with a clientele of bohos, blue collar tradesmen, and college kids that reflected the mixed-race neighborhood. The old-style jukebox wailed the intro to Credence’s cautionary tale of guns, reminding me of an old Asian war, lending a lean, throbbing bass line to the sound of customer chatter and rattling dishes. “Run Through the Jungle” had always stirred both apprehension and arousal in me, which was certainly appropriate now.

Rachel worked behind the counter at the grill. Seeing her sent a jolt up my spine and prickled the back of my neck. Her jade green, Asian eyes were shadowed by a shock of black silky hair that was shorter than I remembered – less sophisticated, more punk. She wore a rolled black bandanna tied at her nape that went around her forehead under her bangs. Black jeans and a black tee shirt gloved her tiny frame, which was thinner than I remembered. Black, steel-toed work boots protected her feet from dropped cookware. She moved with no wasted effort, deceptive calm.

I sat at the counter in front of the grill. When Rachel turned with a plate of stir-fry in her hands, she met my eyes, paused, and moved off to deliver the plate. In a few seconds, she came back.

“Hello, Logan,” she said softly with a pale smile.

I took off my sunglasses. “Hiya, kid. Thanks for not runnin’ when you knew I was comin’.”

Her expression turned enigmatic. “I didn’t know.”

Were her talents off, or was she too numb to heed them? “What’re you callin’ yourself, darlin’?”

“Yo.”

I nodded. That was probably short for _yogensha_ , Japanese for prophet. It mirrored her mutant name, Omen.

“What can I get you?” she asked softly.

I put a rein on my pheromones, ignored the spike in hers and the racing of her heartbeat. The attraction was still there, as strong as ever. So were a lot of reasons why that was complicated. The new part was how much pain lurked in her eyes. Why was she slinging hash three thousand miles from home?

“What’s good?”

“Everything except the oatmeal. What’s left is burnt.”

“Burger’s fine. Cup of coffee.”

She turned to put my food on the grill.

I watched her over my folded hands. She moved with familiarity and ease, coordinating five or six meals as well as mine. Steak and a chef’s salad went to an artsy-scruffy couple in the front booth. A smothered chicken dinner with green beans, broccoli, and mashed potatoes went to an electrician at the other end of the counter. Belgian waffles went to a couple of twenty-something groupie girls. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and carrots went to a skinny college boy with a stack of math textbooks and a half-finished paper spread out on the table.

A man appeared out of the loo and picked up an order pad, casting me a guarded look as he moved out to take orders. He was tall and beefy with a flamboyant handlebar mustache and a black bandana to match Rachel’s, though he wore his as a do rag over long curly brown hair, leaving a long braid to hang down his back. He passed an order to Rachel, who got a pan of sushi out of the refrigerator. Odd mix – classic diner food as well as stir-fry and sushi? She arranged the sushi on a traditional Japanese block with wasabi and ginger, got chopsticks and soy sauce, and delivered it to a young African woman in a booth.

She assembled two huge burgers on a platter, added lettuce, tomato, onion rings, and potato salad on the side, and put them in front of me. They were rare the way I liked them; cheddar, ketchup, and onions; no mustard. She hadn’t forgotten.

“Musta thought I was hungry.”

She poured my coffee as I took a bite. “I know how much you have to eat.”

“Thank you, Yo-san,” I said in Japanese. “I’d like to talk when things slow down. If you’d honor me.”

She stilled. “It’s cold out. Does that bother you?”

I shook my head.

She looked towards the man taking orders. “I’m taking a break, Satch. Back in a few minutes.”

He looked at me hard, then at Rachel. “You all right, Yo?”

Rachel nodded.

He didn’t like it, but he moved to the grill.

Rachel beckoned to me. “Bring your plate.”

I followed her behind the counter, past the scruffy teenaged boy washing dishes, through the cramped storeroom. The back door opened on a small concrete patio where someone had put a picnic table. I put my plate and mug down and waited for Rachel to pull on her coat and sit down. The coat looked like a flea market find, an old black naval pea coat that was worn around the cuffs and lapels, but still plenty warm. Rachel was rich enough to buy a coat factory, not just the castoffs of such a place. More mysteries. I sat and worked on my burgers before the damp cold turned them into lead weights.

“Not bad for a hash diner, kid. How’s the sushi?”

“Pretty good. I make it myself.”

“You okay?”

She nodded, but her eyes didn’t reveal much life. They didn’t glow with her talents, either.

“Those say somethin’ else,” I said, pointing to her eyes. “What’re you doin’ here? I’ve been lookin’ for you for five months.”

She was silent for several bites of my burgers, staring at her hands. Damn. I was never one for words. I tried not to growl as I struggled to find them.

“Your grandmother wasn’t sure you were alive. She put me on to your friend Daniel, the great white geek. Him and his magic electrons? Nothin’. Professor X and his braniac machine? More of the same.”

“How did you do it?”

“I do this for a livin’. Still wasn’t easy. Put sixty-five hundred klicks on the bike. I was beginnin’ to think your grandmother was right.”

“Why did you do it?”

I snorted. “I took it personal when you disappeared, Rachel. You called me the samurai of your house. Thought that meant somethin’. Thought we had somethin’. You didn’t believe any of it, huh?”

She kept staring at her hands, as still as the cold air.

“Missed you.” My voice sounded reluctant and surly even to me. “Been worried about you.”

Still nothing. She held herself so motionless that she could’ve been a mannequin.

“Maybe you got reasons to stay underground, kid. If so, I’ll tell your grandmother and your friend that you’re safe – if you are – and that’s it. But I’d like to know what’s goin’ on. This ain’t you, Rachel.”

She still didn’t speak, and her eyes were shut as well as downcast. This time I waited her out. Her fingers tightened on themselves. Her shoulders tensed.

“The last time I was with you, Logan, you were tortured for a month because I’d learned too much about Weapon X.” Her voice was so soft that I barely heard it. “When Professor Xavier linked with us on the river, I got your memories of that month. I… don’t know how you survived. I would rather have died than put you through that. I disappeared so I didn’t give them the incentive to do it again.”

I’d gotten Rachel’s memories then, too, but I hadn’t thought about the channel working both ways. Her scent told me she’d gotten the full dose of nasty that came with my memories, every one a horror of black ops handiwork at its worst. Ram them into the brain of a gentle woman, a civilian, a mutant with powerful empathic skills that were still developing… no wonder Rachel had looked at knives the way she had.

“Don’t take the blame for what they did, Rachel. They had their hooks into me long before I met you. You were just an afterthought.”

She swallowed hard. “I scared them with the information I collected, Logan. I shouldn’t have told Victor Creed. I made a mistake, and you paid for it.”

“So what does bein’ out here have to do with that?”

She sighed. “Remember when I asked you how you survived without being numb or suicidal?”

I nodded. “You were the first. Didn’t want you to be the second.”

She looked up at the sky. “Sometimes I was. But you said that neither of those options was open to you. You said you stayed in the Danger Room until you exhausted yourself enough to rejoin the human race, at least as much as you ever did. This is my version of that. I just… haven’t exhausted myself yet.”

The door banged behind Rachel. Satch stuck his head out. He looked angry.

“Yo?” he growled.

Rachel got up. “I’m off after the dinner crowd.”

“Musta missed me, if you’re willin’ to keep talkin’.”

She smiled, and went inside the diner.

I didn’t get to think about her words. Once she disappeared inside, Satch loomed over the table.

“What do you want with Yo?” he growled.

I ate the rest of my potato salad. “Who says I want anythin’ with her?”

“She’s my piece of ass, man. You mess with her, you mess with me.”

I put down my fork and looked up at the guy. “She’s nobody’s ‘piece of ass,’ bub. If you’ve laid a hand on her, I will personally spread your insides over fourteen acres. Startin’ now.”

“Oh, yeah?” Satch blustered, and made the mistake of coming around the table at me. I grabbed his wrist, and before he could yelp I had him down beside me, his arm bent over the table, close to the breaking point of his elbow. He whitened and couldn’t find the breath to cry out.

“Yeah,” I said conversationally, and took a bite of onion ring. “So what’s it gonna be, Satch? You wanna watch me break your arm, or you wanna apologize for spewin’ filth about the lady?”

“Jesus, man! I never touch her. Just trying to look out for her. She never sees anyone she knows, never asks for a break, never takes a day off unless I make her, then you come hunting like some kinda wolf, like you want to make trouble for her. Think I should scare you off. That’s all.”

“So about Yo…” I squeezed.

“Yeouch! So I’m sorry, man. Yo’s good people. Real good people. I don’t want to see her hurt, is all.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed, and let Satch’s arm go. I went back to my onion rings. “She’s a good cook.”

Satch rubbed his arm gingerly. “She’s a lotta good things. She in trouble?”

I shook my head. “Not with me. Anybody else think so?”

He shook his head. “Except maybe herself. What’s her story?”

“If she didn’t tell you, then I’ll respect that. Been worried about her.”

Satch grunted understandingly, though he didn’t understand much. But he considered me while I finished eating. He came to some internal decision, and leaned back against the table.

“So she shows up four months ago, looking for work. No references, no green card, no Social Security card, nothing. Just what’s on her back. Looks hungry. I let her wash dishes and clean up for meals and some cash. She does a bang up job for a week. Back then, I got this cook. He’s the dregs. Can’t boil water without an argument and a cigarette, but he’s a body, and it ain’t like this is a great place. One day, he doesn’t show. Yo fires up the grill and puts on the burgers. We ain’t so busy, so I figure, what the hell. What do you know? She knows what she’s doing and then some. So when the deadbeat comes back, I fire his ass and start paying Yo under the table for her trouble. Then I find out she’s hard-timing it, bunking in some abandoned place. Ain’t safe. So I put her up in my own house. It ain’t what you think. I don’t lay a hand on her. She’s got this way about her, like she’s some kind of angel, y’know?”

“I know.”

“Yeah. So she starts cleaning the house. The bathroom. I’m a single guy; you know what that’s like. Asks to paint a few walls. Fixes up the broken furniture. The place looks great. Picks this place up, too. Cleans, puts some flowers on the counter, fills up the napkins. Fixes the coffee maker and the stove. Never stops. So I turn her loose on my grandmother’s old shit out in the shed behind the house. Furniture and stuff’s been lying around for decades. I figure it’s only good for torching, so anything Yo does with it is money, right? She knows all about that stuff. She takes it up to the antiques market on Sundays and makes some damned good money for what I think is junk. We split the money sixty-forty. I want fifty-fifty, she says thirty is enough for her, so we split the difference. Lets me fix up this place and the house; lets her do new stuff like sushi. We got a rep as a good joint now, got a better clientele, all because of her. She even weeds the yard. She’s the gentlest person I know.”

I nodded. “Me, too.”

“That’s why I look out for her. You understand. I just say what I say to scare you off.”

I held up my coffee cup. “Gotcha.”

Satch fell silent.

I finished my coffee. “She thinks she’s in trouble?”

Satch nodded emphatically. “Like she crosses the wrong guy or something. Or maybe she has to do some nasty shit. I hear her – she has nightmares sometimes. Startles too easily. Then there’s the cleaning. I mean, women clean fit to set you crazy anyway, but lots of times they clean when they’re upset. If anybody’s doing penance, she is. She don’t let you give her anything. Sometimes it hurts to watch.”

“Sometimes it hurts to watch what drives a woman to that,” I said gruffly.

Satch looked up. “Somebody does something to her? Or does she do something?”

I was silent for a long breath. “She survived, Satch. Sometimes that ain’t easy.”

He grunted. “You a vet?”

I nodded.

“Figures. Me, too.” He pulled up his left pant leg to show me the metal underneath. “New South China. Lotta civvie P.O.W.s. Something like that?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

He grunted again. “She don’t cry, you know? She don’t smile. Until she sees you.”

I tightened my jaw and met Satch’s eyes, warning him off, and kept working on my burger.

He grinned like he’d found a treasure. “All right. You got a name?”

“Best I keep it to myself.”

“Is it Logan?”

I kept my attention on the last of my burger. “Why?”

“Those nightmares... somebody name of Logan gets hurt. She takes it hard.”

“She’s the type.”

He accepted that. “So... you gonna help her?”

I shrugged. “Up to her.”

“All right. You want to come back in, the end booth’s okay. Warmer than out here.”

“Thanks.”

Satch got up and headed back inside. After a second or two, I collected my dishes and followed.

 

* * *

 

I spent the afternoon drinking coffee in the booth Satch had offered, and thinking. When I couldn’t live with the shit in my head, I went full tilt in the Danger Room, exhausting myself until all I could do was drag my ass into bed and pass out. Rachel didn’t flail the way I did, but I figured the result was the same. Sure, she moved among the customers with quiet grace, gentling with a soft word or a kind regard or the swift delivery of an order, showing me why Satch had named her the angel he did. But in paying each task full attention, she granted herself nothing, not a break between orders or even basic self-awareness, like she didn’t want to give the noise inside her a chance to come out. I didn’t press when she refilled my coffee without prompting, just murmured my thanks.

The dinner crowd swelled, and I moved out of the booth to make room for more customers. I took my time over a cigar out back, but it was still late when the last customer drained the last cup of coffee and headed out. I sat at the counter finishing stir-fried chicken and Chinese vegetables. Rachel would have washed my dishes herself because the dishwasher kid had left an hour ago, but Satch waved her off.

“Go see your friend, Yo. You’re here enough.”

She nodded. “Take care, Satch.”

“You, too, girl. Don’t come tomorrow. It’s Maria’s day to cover.”

Rachel shrugged into her coat and walked with me outside. Our breath steamed white in the streetlight.

“Where do you want to go, darlin?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t have much, Logan. A room in Satch’s house.”

“If you don’t want me there, we’ll go somewhere else. No strings. Just want to know you’re all right.”

Again, she stilled – a woman suddenly aware of a knife slipping between her ribs.

“What? I don’t want to hurt you.”

She stared at her boots. “Everything hurts, Logan.”

“Why?”

“It’s like trying to listen to a bad car stereo. Even if the volume is up so high that it hurts your ears, you still can’t hear anything. Too numb and too raw all at the same time.”

“So you work yourself to death tryin’ to do penance? Or to wear yourself out?”

“That’s Satch talking. He’s a lapsed Catholic, you know. Everything’s guilt with him.”

“Satch is okay. Just tryin’ to run a little interference for you. Thinks you’re an angel or somethin’.”

I smelled shame. “I’m not an angel. Just what I am is one of the things I’m trying to live with.”

“You mean the beast.”

She shrugged. “Among other things.”

Hell, what was I supposed to do? If I touched her, I flooded her with everything I felt. If I said anything, my mouth would get me into more trouble than my claws would, and this was something I didn’t want to mess up.

“You smell… stuck,” Rachel ventured.

I whuffed in exasperation. “Damn, woman. I can’t touch you, I gotta watch what I say, and now I gotta watch my scent, too?”

I felt her pale smile even in the dark. “See what it’s like?”

“All right – straight out. You’re livin’ on the edge like a vet with PTSD, kid. You ain’t takin’ care of yourself. Maybe you don’t want to; maybe you don’t know how. You treat the dishes better than yourself.”

“I’m not a soldier, Logan.”

“What you went through was combat whether you enlisted for it or not. You’re tryin’ to handle war wounds. Battle fatigue. Shell shock. That’s tough to do alone.”

Rachel kept staring at her feet. I smelled fear and yearning – did her body ask for help because the rest of her couldn’t? “What else am I supposed to do, Logan? My parents died in some part because of me. You were horrifically tortured because of me, too. I don’t have just your emotions from that month – I _see_ what they did to you, I _feel_ it, over and over and over again. So I went under the radar. I’m not anywhere I used to be. I haven’t been near a computer or a bank since I left home. If I can’t be found, maybe they’ll leave you and my grandmother and Daniel alone.”

“Self-imposed exile, sounds like.”

“Something you know about.”

“To sling hash?”

“I found a safe place where no one would get close while I try to make peace with things.”

“Hasn’t worked, has it?” I said roughly. “You cut yourself off from everyone and everything that could help you. What sense does that make?”

She laughed, but the sound held more despair than the cold air held ice. “You of all people should know, Logan. Didn’t you leave me because you didn’t want your past to hurt me? It’s almost funny, the way we’ve switched places. And you don’t understand me now any more than I understood you then.”

She was dead on. I’d never questioned the sense of running until Rachel did it. The despair and futility of it kicked me in the balls.

“This is different,” I growled, as if a snarl could obscure the lie.

“Why? Because I left, not you, and maybe for the first time you’re the one left hanging?”

The scent of her anger hung in the air, then wafted into grief she hadn’t wanted to reveal. Instinctively I put my arms around her and tried not to think about how much I’d missed doing that.

“Ain’t the first time. Doesn’t mean it’s any easier.”

Her scent had spiked with fear when I touched her, but it calmed as my regret sank into her. To my surprise, she groped for my bare hand and leaned into me with so much want in her bones that I was humbled. Her scent flooded with a riot of smells, more than I could sort out. If this was what her thoughts were like, it was no wonder she tried to keep herself from thinking.

“I didn’t lie to you, Logan. I believed what I said, until… The Noise in my head… it’s… some days I don’t know who I am, I can’t see anything real because of the memories, and it’s… I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, to worry, to watch when I can’t contain everything. I’ve missed you so much, but you being here… I’m afraid for you. Some days I still want to die to get away from The Noise. I don’t know how to stop it.”

I winced at the despair in Rachel’s whispered admission. “Let’s get warm. Hog’s out front. Anywhere you wanna go. If that hurts too much…”

“I stopped listening to the omens. More noise. That’s why I didn’t know you were coming.”

 _Good way to get yourself killed,_ I thought, but didn’t let that past my teeth. “Would you have stayed if you’d known?”

She thought about it. “Not if it’d been anyone else.”

“Let’s go.”

I got on the bike and pulled on my gloves while Rachel climbed on behind me. Once I kicked the hog to life, her hands went around my ribs. She put her mouth near my ear to give me directions, pressing her chest against my back. I savored those touches, but kept a tight grip on my emotions so she didn’t overload. We didn’t have far to go – maybe six klicks into a neighborhood that’d seen better days. I pulled up to one of the tidier places, an old three-story clapboard house that needed painting, but the yard was neatly maintained and the front door had a holiday wreath tacked to it. I left my Harley in the shed, took my duffel, and followed Rachel through the back door into the kitchen. It was shabby, but clean and tidy. Only a single light lit the kitchen, but as she led me through the house, I saw well enough. The furniture was sparse, old, but carefully repaired, and arranged with some sense of presence. We passed Satch’s room, and given the chaos there I well imagined what the rest of the place had been like before Rachel had arrived.

Up on the third story was Rachel’s room. Under the eaves of the house, the ceiling was all angles and sloped heights. The wood floor was bare but smoothly finished, and the walls were sound and newly painted. The room held almost nothing, just the sound of the wind outside and a mattress on the floor in the corner with a lot of comfortable pillows and worn quilts. Against the opposite wall were tidy stacks of clothes and a plastic milk crate for shampoo, soap, and female stuff. When Rachel stooped to turn on the small candlestick lamp by the mattress, I counted two pairs of black jeans, six or seven black tees, a sweater, and some socks and underwear. That was it.

“Do you want some tea?”

I shook my head. “Been drinkin’ coffee all afternoon.”

“Loo’s down the hall. I have a clean towel and stuff if you want a shower. Give me your jacket.”

I handed it to her, and she put it with her coat by the door.

“Do you want –”

“Rachel.”

“Yes?”

“It’s okay. I’m gonna hit the loo, and that’s all I need.”

I dug jeans out of my duffel and went down the hall. It felt good to get out of my riding leathers. By the time I padded back to Rachel’s room, she’d taken off her heavy boots and sat cross-legged in the small window seat under the dormer, a string of worry beads in her hand, quietly counting off each one.

“Where’s it okay for me to sit?”

The beads clicked through her fingers. “The floor gets hard. It’s okay if you sit on the bed.”

I folded down on the mattress. It had no bed frame but was good quality, and the pillows offered the illusion of a buffer against all that was outside. I put a pillow between my back and the wall.

“You still trust me?”

She nodded once.

“Then sit with me.”

She came slowly, but she came. I sat her down with her back against my chest, arranged my legs to give her room, and leaned her head against my chest. I unfolded a quilt over her and turned out the light. I shut my eyes, stroked her hair, and put my arms around her. Then I set myself to meditate.

“What are you doing?” she asked. Her voice was tight, higher than usual.

“Shhh.”

I did all the things you’re supposed to do to settle into meditation, the long slow breaths, the awareness of the body and then the gradual focus only on the breath, not counting the moments, not pushing them to come or go, just letting them. For once, I found that still place and hovered there, not thinking about Rachel or myself or the passage of time. Rachel’s body slowly, slowly settled into mine, and her hand came to rest on my forearm. Her scent calmed, which further calmed me. It’s rare that I find that peace alone, much less with someone, so I took it for the gift it was for both of us, and let it linger as long as it would.

When I came out of it, Rachel was quiet; not asleep, but relaxed. I stretched stiff muscles slowly, but her hand tightened on my arm, not wanting me to move away. I subvocalized a question.

“This is the first time in a long time I’ve been able to be still.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

I laid us flat on the mattress, easing my stiff back, taking the pressure off my hip sockets. Rachel curled beside me and put her head on my shoulder and her arm across my chest as she’d done so often last summer. I shut my eyes and savored the warmth in Rachel’s body. But her scent wavered from her hard-won calm, trembled between adrenaline and nothing, fight/fright/freeze and numbness. I knew that hypervigilant state and the havoc it wreaked on everything from blood chemistry to mental perceptions.

“Guess I know where you are,” I ventured. “Maybe better than you do, darlin’.”

Rachel didn’t speak, but her scent stopped shifting so badly. I struggled to find the words she needed.

“You got all these emotions floodin’ you. What… you and I. What Weapon X made you feel – anger, fear, guilt. You did time in solitary, hurt, drugged, hungry, cold… then Weapon X threw me at you when I was nothin’ but a junkyard dog with rabies. That scared hell outa you, but you hung tough and held me together – so courage.

“You got what Creed forced on you about Fox and what he wanted to do to you. You had to take him down, and you did. More fear, more courage, more guilt.”

The agony in Rachel’s scent skyrocketed, her body clenched tight, her skin broke out in a sweat – but she didn’t make a sound or a tear.

“Then Chuck crammed my memories down your throat. They made what happened on the river look like a cakewalk. Add ‘em up – you took a lot of hits, each one as mortal as a bullet wound.

“Now your body’s back in the real world, but your brain’s still bleedin’. You exhaust yourself to keep from thinkin’. But your brain’s got so much in it that it can’t stop. Stuff leaks through your exhaustion and scares the shit out of you. That’s where you are.”

Her ribs heaved as if she’d run a marathon. “You knew what I’d gotten from Victor Creed?”

“You felt Fox die. You felt what he felt when she did. That’s what I got from Chuck on the river.”

Her moan was almost silent. “I didn’t ever want you to know that.”

I didn’t want to think about that old murder, or about Rachel’s struggle to contain the emotions forced on her. As my rage and grief flared, Rachel flinched. I forced the thoughts aside, forced myself to calm. But she wasn’t done.

“Then you may as well know the last of it. Why I killed Victor Creed. The real reason why.”

I tried not to anticipate what Rachel would say, and willed my body not to tense.

Rachel huddled against me. “When I was first brought to the detention center, when Creed kicked me around, he didn’t do it just to hurt me. He did it to… mark me. Like you’d brand a horse, or tattoo a prostitute. He had me by the neck. I hung in his hand, choking while he bit me and licked up the blood. And his emotions… even though I was drugged…”

She shuddered, and my muscles tightened in response. “Then on the river, when you were still…”

“That junkyard dog with rabies?” I supplied.

She nodded jerkily. “You looked at me like you saw the mark he’d put on me, like I was no better than what he tried to make of me. You thought I wanted him to come after us, that I wanted… more. I killed Victor Creed because I didn’t want him to kill me. But I did it because of the way you looked at me, too. I did it because I didn’t ever want you to look at me that way again.”

Rachel’s scent disintegrated into shame and grief. For a moment I was back in that Alberta cell being force-fed lies – that Rachel had betrayed me, that Creed had more than marked her, that she’d been a willing participant in that as well as my torture. I think one of my… handlers had even looked vaguely like Rachel. Or maybe the drugs and the pain had made me think that. When I’d been thrown in Rachel’s cell like so much garbage, I’d barely recognized her for who and what she really was. But her scent had told me, and the way her eyes had lit with recognition, then grief and compassion for what I’d become.

“I’m sorry, darlin’. I knew the truth when you faced Creed and those soldiers alone on the river. It was in your eyes, your scent, the way you moved. Chuck just confirmed it. So much shit went down so fast… hard to talk about it. Shoulda told you.”

“What was I supposed to do, Logan? Die the way he wanted me to? Let him do to me what he did to you? To Silver Fox?”

“No, darlin’, no. If he’d backed off, then you never woulda thought to do what you did.”

“What I did was murder. It was my bullet that took Creed down –”

“You don’t know that –”

“Yes, I do. Yes, Logan, I do. My talent showed me the shot ahead of time, and I took it.”

“It ain’t murder to kill an enemy combatant during a firefight. He was gunnin’ for you, and you shot him. Without his healing factor, he would’ve died then, and nobody would’ve had to give him the coup de graçe.”

“Giving him the coup de graçe so you wouldn’t look at me as you did is murder. That is so evil.”

Though her voice was quiet, Rachel’s body trembled and her scent was rank. I fumbled for words.

“Rachel…you said yourself that that wasn’t your only reason. Creed declared war on you. The only outcome was your survival or his. No good choices – just hard ones.”

“Professor Xavier said he could make Creed forget me.”

“Creed and I have had our heads fucked with too many times for me to believe that. If I had, I’da hauled you outa there and left Creed on the river.”

Her arms clenched around me. “How do I live with this?”

I held her steady. “It ain’t easy dealin’ with your own shit, darlin’. It gets harder when you got a dose o’ pain from all these other people, too. So you gotta be smarter than me. You need to be with people who understand what you’ve been through. They can help you live with this.”

“Did that work for you?”

I smirked at myself in the dark. “I said you gotta be smarter than me, Rachel. I… never saw the sense in what I said until today, watchin’ you. A lot of me in that. Ain’t easy to watch.”

“If I go back, I’ll be in the same place where I was taken last time. Weapon X knows Rachel Osaka, and then my grandmother and Daniel and you and the X-Men are in the line of fire again.”

“Maybe not,” I replied. “Chuck’s been workin’ his magic. It’s easier to wipe things outa heads other than mine, and he’s done a good job of that. The few who know about you have figured out that you’re more of an asset than a liability.”

Rachel sat bolt upright. Even in the dark, her eyes were wide. “Oh, God, Logan, what did he tell them? I don’t want anything to do with them!”

“Understood. He played on my reputation for this one.”

“What does that mean?”

I grinned and eased Rachel back down next to me. “More’n one government knows what an iffy thing it is to piss me off, darlin’. Anything that keeps me happy means I don’t tee off on them. So the woman who makes the most of my good points is a national treasure worth protectin’.”

Despite herself, Rachel laughed. It wasn’t much of a sound – part sob, part laughter – but I bet it was more than she’d expressed in months. “He’s good, if he can convince anybody of that.”

I’d made sure Chuck had had the ammunition to do that. After I’d taken Rachel to her grandmother’s, I’d gone back to the hellhole where we’d been imprisoned and taken it apart. Nobody would hold anybody there again without a few billions’ worth of refurbishment and an exorcism. Rachel didn’t need to know that now. It was enough that I’d gotten her to laugh.

“He has his moments,” I agreed. “But you do make the most of me.”

“You give me a lot to work with.”

“Bullshit, kid,” I stroked her hair. “Most of the time, I’m that junkyard dog. Think I don’t like it when you call me your samurai? Think I don’t try to live up to it when you say it?”

Rachel was silent, but her body relaxed and her scent was calmer. We got under the quilts and I curved around her. She drew me close and didn’t speak again, but the air held less despair. I fell asleep beside Rachel with more ease than I’d felt in five months.

 

* * *

 

I didn’t talk much the next morning. Rachel had enough noise in her head, so I worked to keep my mental state out of its usual instinctive racket. I thought calm, I thought quiet. I let my body soothe hers through touch and scent, though I damped down my pheromones. As much as I ached to make love with her, she hurt too much for me to ask. So we slept in until Satch had gone to work, we had showers and breakfast, and then I took her out on the bike. We cruised around Seattle until we found a park on Puget Sound. At this time of year, we had the place to ourselves. We found a bench overlooking the water with a good view and sat down. I lit a cigar, rubbed her knee, and let my thoughts drift.

“Thank you for last night,” Rachel said after a while. “It was the first time I’d found peace in a long time.”

My chuckle was ironic.

“What?”

“Funny. I don’t find peace for myself too often. Must be easier to find it for someone else.”

She leaned her head onto my shoulder, mute thanks.

“You’re strong, darlin’. You’ll get through this. Just takes a while.”

She gave me a private smile. “And the right help.”

I shrugged, accepting her thanks. “Ain’t easy, granted. Hardest part ain’t ever the firefight. It’s livin’ with what comes after.”

Rachel took my arm and looped it over her shoulders. She snuggled nearer, feeling more like the lover I remembered than the dazed war survivor I’d comforted last night. “So what should I do?”

I eased her closer. “Your call, not mine. I want you to head East with me. But whatever you decide, I think the best revenge oughta be your goal.”

“Revenge?” Rachel stiffened. “You mean –”

“Whoa, chill, kid,” I urged. “Remember that old sayin’ about livin’ well is the best revenge? That’s what I mean. How you do that is negotiable. I’ve got your back.”

She drew breath to protest, but I held up my hand, forestalling her.

“Listen. If you don’t want my help because you don’t need it, fine. But if you need it and won’t take it because you feel guilty or something, stop. No woman is an island and all that shit. Sometimes the ol’ Canucklehead can do something other than raise hell.”

Rachel almost giggled at my growl.

“What’s so funny?” I spread my arms wide.

“Nothing. It’s one of the most generous things anyone has ever said to me. It’s just….”

“What?”

She giggled for real this time.

“What, woman?”

“Today, you’re the chivalrous samurai. But yesterday, you walked into the Diamond quite ready to raise hell. I felt it when you opened the door, before I ever saw you, and you nearly gave Satch a heart attack. Even your hair bristled like a wolf’s ruff. It’s why the rest of the world calls you the Wolverine. But I know what else lurks behind your no-shit attitude and can appreciate the incongruity.”

“Incongruity,” I repeated, grinning. “Incongruity. Damn, darlin’, do you think I’m fit company for such a fancy word? Truth is, your pheromones shot off the charts when you laid eyes on me yesterday. You _liked_ the ‘tude.”

She smothered a guilty smile. “I did. I have a perverse streak.”

“About a kilometer wide. So see how you like me as a hard ass.” I grasped her bare hand in mine. “Don’t waste your guilt on Victor Creed. He was the worst kind of killer and I don’t regret icin’ him. Pisses me off that the bastard’s finally dead, but he’s still hurtin’ you. Don’t let him.”

Rachel stilled again, but I didn’t apologize. I hadn’t spoken in anger, and she surely sensed my emotions though her skin. I took a drag on my cigar, closed my eyes, and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

She ducked her head against my chest. “I did murder, Logan.”

I snorted. “Scruples of a fool, darlin’. You want me to spell it out for you? This wasn’t offin’ some innocent lamb just to watch him die. This was self-defense against a lowlife psychopath with a fixation and a healin’ factor. Did you want Creed to do to you all the scary shit that’s leakin’ in your head right now? Did you want to join the dozens of women he butchered? Or did you think you’d just keep outrunnin’ him until you’re ninety? Maybe you don’t like what you did. But don’t regret it. And if you say one word about buggin’ out, runnin’ again, I’ll spank you.”

I went back to my cigar.

“Hmm,” she said. “I hit a nerve.”

“Don’t change the subject. I want you to stop feelin’ guilty because you lived.”

Rachel was quiet. “I don’t know why I do,” she said at last.

“I do. One of your motives wasn’t worthy of a saint. Creed made both of us believe you were a piece of meat, you hated him for it, and you made him pay for it. So you’re human, not a doormat. Get over it.”

I was growling, subvocalizing. I backed off on both and looked away to let my emotions calm. Rachel bowed her head, cradled my hand in both of hers. She wasn’t upset, but reflective, considering.

“You’re right.” She swallowed with difficulty. “I did hate him for that.”

She met my gaze, and some of the pain faded from her eyes. What replaced it explained why she’d hated Creed so much. I stroked her hair. She leaned her head against my shoulder.

“Shit,” I muttered. “I finally get my meditation thing down, and look what happens.”

Rachel smiled. Really smiled, and let me see it. “You aren’t a hard ass. You’re that samurai of House Osaka. My white knight. In black with claws and ‘tude, but you are.”

I grinned perversely, not quite owning up to it, not quite believing it, but liking the sentiment. “So are we goin’ home on the hog, or do I ship it and we fly?”

She was quiet for a long time, but I was patient while I worked on my cigar.

“I need a few days to take care of Satch. He needs a good cook, someone who’ll look out for things.”

I savored victory with the last puff of my cigar. “Fair enough. Just do one thing for me.”

“What?”

I dug in a pocket and pulled out my cell phone. “This is a secure line that can’t be traced. Call your grandmother and let her know you’re okay. The woman’s drivin’ me nuts.”

Rachel was too surprised to hide her incredulous look. “No, she isn’t! She’s not the type. You just don’t want me to think you’re a nice guy.”

“If I were a nice guy, darlin’, I’d tell you to call your friend Daniel, too. But I don’t like the competition.”

She laughed and put her head back on my shoulder. “You don’t have any competition, Logan.”

I handed her the phone and did my best not to smirk. But she knew she didn’t have any, either.

 

* * *

 

It’d be tidy to end the story on that Puget Sound park bench with Rachel stoking my ego and me looking smug. But life doesn’t go that way. All that’d happened was that I’d found my lady on the battlefield. She had a long way to go before we took the Harley on any jaunt into the sunset.

Consequently, we hung around Seattle until Rachel made sure that Satch’s new cook would look after things the way Rachel wanted. She also got on the phone and straightened out Satch’s medical coverage with Veteran Affairs. Then she tackled the local veterans’ group to make sure Satch got the proper medical treatments owed him. Satch had given more to his country than a leg and the ability to speak in anything but the present tense, and Rachel patiently threaded through the bureaucracy to line up the things he needed. As a finishing touch, she pulled in an antiques appraiser to look at an old sideboard lurking in Satch’s dining room, confirmed that its provenance was everything she thought it was, and sold it on the spot for an amount that took Satch’s breath away. With the money that old Regency monstrosity brought in and some decent medical care, Satch would be comfortable for a few more years.

Satch had his own take on Rachel’s situation. He decided that she was in some kind of military witness protection program, and I was the soldier sent to look after her. An old movie about a bodyguard falling for a singer was all he needed to explain his short-order cook and me. I kept my amusement to myself and let him think what he wanted. He was a decent guy who tried to make a decent living after sacrificing for his country, and he’d looked after my woman as well as he could. I respected him for all of that.

We left Satch’s place on a cold but sunny day. Rachel paid cash for a set of heavy bike leathers, a helmet, and a duffel to hold her few things, then we headed south towards warmer weather. I broke early for the day just over the California border; even though I cut most of the wind for Rachel, she was way past frozen by the time we stopped at some Chinese all-you-can-eat place. Hot and sour soup and spicy Szechuan pot stickers warmed her enough for us to find a motel room, but she didn’t completely thaw until she had a hot shower.

When Rachel came out of the bathroom drying her hair, I looked up from the bed where I lounged scanning the cable channels. “Better, darlin’?”

She nodded. “Your turn.”

“Don’t have to ask me twice.” I tossed her the TV remote. “Not much on, unless you like wrestlin’ and prime time soaps.”

I took my time savoring the hot water and soap, but eventually I got out and prepared to face the dilemma of which bed to sleep in. We’d kept things platonic at Satch’s place, but that hadn’t been the way things were the last time we’d been on the road. I brushed my teeth, pulled on my jeans, and took a breath before I came out of the bathroom.

Rachel was in bed, the one I’d lounged on while she’d been in the shower. She’d burrowed herself a nest under the blankets and was curled sleepily in the middle of the pillows from both beds. The TV showed some cooking show, but Rachel paid more attention to her worry beads than the construction of crème brulée. She opened her eyes as I plunked myself down on the other bed. She didn’t say anything, but her body stilled.

“Yeah, I’m over here.”

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I understand.”

I glared at her, but not very hard. “No, you don’t. You’re welcome to anything you want from me. But you’re hurtin’ and I won’t take advantage of that. Your choice of who sleeps where and what else goes on.”

Her scent eased. The TV chef was having a field day with sugar and a blow torch, reminding me of my Weapon X torturers. I didn’t physically wince, but Rachel picked up enough to click off the noise. Then she held out her hand, both beckoning me and offering me comfort. It was the most spontaneous gesture she’d made since I’d found her.

“I’m not the only one with PTSD,” she murmured, putting her arms around me as I eased in with her.

“We all got somethin’, darlin’. Just gotta focus on the here and now.”

She was silent as we settled. Because the metal on my bones weighs so much, I usually cradled her in my arms rather than the other way around. But she shifted so that only my shoulders and head lay against her chest, and the rest of me lay between her legs. Her arms encircled me and I savored the warmth of her bare skin against mine. As she stroked my hair, my muscles eased and my endorphins flowed. Pheromones, though – I kept those low because I’d meant what I’d said about not taking advantage of her, for all I’d welcome anything she offered. For now, it was enough to calm, and as I did, so did Rachel.

“Five months, hmm?”

“Five months what, darlin’?”

“You looked for me for five months?”

“Yup.”

Rachel’s arms tightened briefly. “That’s… humbling. I didn’t expect you to do that.”

I rubbed her leg. “Shoulda. Soldiers don’t leave our own behind. Neither do lovers.”

Slowly, her pheromones started to rise, and her hand strayed across my chest with more than compassionate intent. She shifted from under me, and I sat up against the headboard as she eased over my legs, her hands massaging my shoulders. I rubbed her thighs, savoring how her fingers traced down my shoulders and across my chest. She kissed me, and that’s all it took for me to shed my jeans. I fell into the moment, Rachel here and real after so many empty months, as warm and as needy as I… it consumed me so fast that I forgot to breathe. I forgot everything but what loving with her did to me. In seconds, I peaked with an intensity that I’d forgotten.

“Told you it’s been a long five months,” I murmured.

“For me, too,” she whispered, and it was my turn to tend to her. She didn’t last any longer than I did, but when she crested, it held more than sexual release. My senses flooded with the scent, the sound, and the sight of Rachel finding her way through The Noise. I took the sensations in, fed them back to her, and held her until her body stilled.

“God,” she whispered.

I grinned as I nuzzled her ear. “Name’s Logan, darlin’.”

She giggled. Like she used to. That was the best present she could’ve given me. “You’re as close as I’m going to get.”

“Ain’t bad yourself.”

She snuggled into me and her hand stroked my chest, reminding me of how much it’d hurt to miss her.

 

* * *

 

We headed east. Not an easy trip. On the one hand, Rachel was calmer because we were together. Humbling, that. I’m not kidding when I say that I’m not much of a catch. I’m a soldier built for mayhem, that junkyard dog that guards your car at the shop, but nothing you’d want in your home. Rachel is all that I’m not. How I got under her skin… guess the same way she got under mine when I shoulda known better.

On the other hand, Rachel didn’t have Satch’s diner to distract her from The Noise. With nothing to do but sit behind me on the bike, the shit in her head ripped her apart. I prodded her, but she wouldn’t talk. She had the idea that trying to keep everything inside spared me. Bullshit – I smelled it, tasted it, felt helpless because I couldn’t do anything about it. Some samurai I was.

If the weather had been warmer, I would’ve put her on the pavement to run, just to wear her out. But the weather was harsh – even in Texas and Oklahoma we hit snow. So we drove twelve hours a day, trying to get home fast, and at night I made sure we took the isolated cabins. Rachel was the only person I’ve met who had nightmares to rival mine, because a lot of her nightmares were mine.

In two days, I’d had enough. I’d been watching the sky for hours and knew a blizzard was about to slam us, so we stocked up at the nearest grocery store and found one of those extended stay places with a kitchen. Once we were warm, dry, and fed, I sat Rachel down and put her through the Wolverine version of how to survive when your brain was a toxic dumpsite. Wasn’t pretty. The woman _bled_ to get through it, but she listened, she worked, she didn’t try to kill me. By the time the blizzard broke and we got back on the road, Rachel was better. Not easy, not happy, not herself, but better.

Once we got back to New York, I brought Rachel to the Institute to bunk with me. The X-Men took her in, and for the first time I realized how sneaky they’d been to acclimate me to normal people, or as normal as mutants get. They never told Rachel how messed up she was. They just filled up her time. ‘Ro coaxed her to teach art history, furniture restoration, ballet, yoga. The classes gave her reasons not to fall into her navel and the kids to pester her. Kurt taught her how to fly on the circus trapeze as he’d done in Germany. Even hung-up Ol’ Red Eyes conned her into joining the daily before-breakfast running gang. Chuck let her think that she volunteered to do a lot of the cooking, which was no strain for anybody. Rachel was a hell of a cook, and even the little kids learned to eat something other than sugared cereal.

I tried to get her to spar as we’d done when we’d first met, but she couldn’t yet. Maybe she thought she’d berserk. I let it go. She got stronger every day, and the sparring would come back soon enough.

Something else I let go was the time Rachel spent with Hank McCoy. Funny – both Chuck and Jean offered to talk to her, but Rachel refused both out of hand. Don’t know why. Hank McCoy was a scientific genius inside a massive blue, catlike powerhouse. He’d had his own issues with Weapon X, and maybe it was that common experience that Rachel trusted. The attraction wasn’t sexual and I was relieved that Rachel was talking to someone.

Before long Rachel started to sit meditation again. It was one of the purest acts of courage I’ve ever seen. When you have a head full of The Noise, meditation is the last thing you want to do, because you can’t run away from what bugs you. I suck at it. But Rachel sat every day, holed up in a corner room away from everyone. A couple of times, the raw stench of her emotions brought me close to breaking in on her. So I camped out in the room next door in case things got to be more than she could handle. But as Rachel kept her pain from me, I kept my vigil from her.

Well, at least I thought I did. I was roused out of my waiting one afternoon by a soft knock on the door. When I opened it, there she stood.

“Hiya, darlin’.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked quietly. “Your answer needs to be in days, not minutes.”

“C’mon in,” I shrugged. “I hate arguin’ in public.”

A reluctant smile crossed her lips, but she came in and let me shut the door. “Are we going to argue?”

“Your call.”

“Arguing is not something I enjoy doing with anyone, you especially.”

“So we’ll have rules of engagement. One – workin’ through The Noise is hard. Two – I know how hard it is. Three – when I back you up, it’s a gift. Four – don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Got it?”

She sighed. “Logan…”

I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

As she went to the window, her scent flushed with shame and she folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to hurt myself, Logan. You don’t have to keep a nose out for blood.”

“That ain’t what I’m doin’.”

She swiveled around to look at me. “Isn’t it?”

“Nope.” I plopped into the chair that faced away from her and put my feet up on the facing one. I didn’t need eyes to know that Rachel had eased out of her defensive posture and regarded me curiously – good when you’re trying to reach a person who hurts.

“What, then?”

I held up my hand, offering my emotions straight up, without any chance for me to lie. When she took it, I drew her down on my lap. I had her where I wanted her – in the superior position with me as defenseless-looking as I could manage. Then I looked her straight in the eye.

“In Alberta, when it was me who had to deal with noise, you backed me up, no questions asked. That took courage. As the samurai of House Osaka, I’m honored to do the same for you.”

Her eyes slid away. “That sounds like a nice way of saying that you take care of the weak.”

“Is that what you did for me? Are you callin’ me worse than weak because I don’t handle noise as well as you?”

“You aren’t weak. You’ve been through hell and back –”

“Sound familiar?” I challenged. “In Alberta, someone tried to turn me into your assassin. You got a head full of stuff tryin’ to turn you into an assassin, too, but you’ve got a more complex target than I had. You’re targeted for two people. If The Noise can get you to destroy yourself, then that’ll kill me inside like nothin’ else would.”

I’d cut closer to the truth than I’d meant to, and that made me growl more than I’d meant to. But maybe the growl I couldn’t control was what got to her. She slipped out of my arms to kneel by my chair and lay her head on my chest. Her arms went around my ribs.

“There ought to be a law.”

“I can think of one, like women who think well of old soldiers oughta think just as well of themselves,” I murmured, putting my arms around her. “You?”

“Lovers who fight dirty by surrendering from the start should be sentenced to...”

“To what?” I mock challenged. “To what, huh?”

She looked up with a smile. “I can’t think of anything terrible enough.”

I drew Rachel back up into my lap. “Want me to come up with a suitable penance?”

She gave in to a silent chuckle. “Maybe I can think of something.”

Her lips touched mine and traced a path down my neck. Then her teeth closed gently on my throat, just as a wolf would do to accept acknowledgement of superior status from a subordinate.

I grinned and gave her the moment. But soon enough I drew her lips back up to mine, caressed the silky black hair at the nape of her neck, and let my pheromones go. When I let us up for air, her body had yielded, lying softly against mine.

“If you’re gonna act like an animal,” I growled, “you better be able to handle it when I do, too.”

“Heed your own warning, bub.” Her legs tightened around my hips and she traced a single finger down my throat towards the first button of my shirt.

I had her stripped before she reached the second button. Rachel might be alpha female, but I was alpha male.

 

* * *

 

It’s… hard to talk. But Logan’s paid enough for my silence. My words won’t be like his. It’s like him to clothe his… feelings in machismo.

Everything that Logan said about The Noise was true – but it was even worse than he said. What he didn’t know was that the stress of The Noise had caused my talents to expand. I suppose they did so as a protective mechanism, but they only added to my misery. I no longer needed to touch people to pick up their emotions. During every moment, even the most mundane feelings poured in from everyone I passed. They overwhelmed me with their incessant din. Add everything from Logan’s month of torture... I never imagined a fraction of the things one human can do to another in the name of inflicting pain. But not only did I have all the graphic knowledge of what had happened, I had all the emotions that had accompanied it. Sabretooth’s emotions were sadism at its most horrific. Logan’s were worse – the terror of a man slowly stripped of his humanity until only bestial agony was left. At night, the sensations roiled into vivid nightmares, which further fermented the toxic brew. I found no peace, no rest, no silence. Everything looked red, smelled like rotting blood, and sounded like a scream.

I thought that a retreat to less populated places would help, which is why I fled New York. But I only added the loss of my lover to the train wreck. By the time Logan made his way to Seattle, there wasn’t much left of me. He dragged what little was left back into the world by putting me through his own version of mental rehab. It was harsh, but so was what it tried to counteract. It worked because I trusted Logan and what had kept him alive for so long.

By the time I was able to consider life as a viable option again, we were back in New York. I was grateful to the X-Men for closing ranks around me – Rogue for time in the kitchen just talking, Kurt for sharing his joy of flying on the trapeze, Scott for his posse of runners, and especially Hank for becoming my counselor. Hank understood my situation, and he wasn’t psychic. To let a telepath rummage through my thoughts – to see Logan tortured, or me slicing a living man’s throat – I was hardly able to live with the memories myself. To know another person saw those same images… I couldn’t bear it. Hank helped me defuse the obscenities in my brain without needing to see them directly. He helped me dull the immediacy of my memories.

There are no words for what Logan gave me, other than to name it the lifeline it was.

With so many people to support me, how could I not honor their efforts with my own? I sat meditation again. There was no making peace with what was inside me. So I tried my own version of desensitization therapy. I replayed the scenes of Logan’s torture over and over again, each time remembering that he was alive, as scrappy and as swaggering as ever, until the blood in them turned the sepia of old news. Each time I called up Sabretooth’s emotions, I told myself that he was dead by my hand, and that Silver Fox had died three-quarters of a century ago. I taught myself how to let the emotions of others slide by. Gradually I climbed back into the world.

It was time to resume martial arts. I’d loved them for so many years, yet now I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a katana, spar with Logan, or teach any of the children’s defense classes, all because of what had happened the last time I’d held a knife. But there is never solace in avoidance. So I asked Logan if I could borrow the antique katana and wakizashi I’d given him, and he quickly agreed.

The box sat untouched in my meditation room for days. When I finally touched the blades, I focused on my pleasure when I’d bought them for Logan, and his intensity when I’d given them to him. His silent delight when he took up the katana to practice seeped into me like balm.

When I finally took myself off to the fencing room, it was dark, silent, and very late. Logan had gone out, probably to indulge in beer and a few games of pool at the local dive. I took the katana in my right hand, the wakizashi in my left, and just let the feel of them settle into my bones again. I kept the lights off and let my empathy place the blades, the room, the nattering of a thousand sensations in the right places.

The nattering calmed. Still. Silent. Memories sleeping. Just me, the blades, the floor, the air, the dark.

I began, not worrying about the precision of the steps or the force of the blades, only the stillness of intent and focus, letting the moves come of themselves. After many tentative minutes, I remembered my favorite children’s book about a healthy child whose hunchbacked father kept him in bed to avoid the same affliction. The real affliction wasn’t anything but fear, and the boy finally learned to walk, run, play, celebrate. Gradually my body relaxed, the movements flowed, and the ease crept back. My head emptied its trash, just for a moment, then turned itself inside out when there was no burden to weigh it down.

I was free. I danced in the dark because all I needed to see was inside me.

When I stopped, the only sound was my panting; the only smell, my sweat. That was enough. I wiped and oiled the blades, then quietly cradled them in their padded box. I headed back upstairs. My memories were still with me, would always be with me. But they had lost their power to consume. My life was mine, not the prisoner of the memories given to me. Balance. Peace.

When I came into the main hall of the mansion, the big grandfather clock had just struck three. The door to the garage opened. I smelled the acrid tangs of motorcycle exhaust, beer, and cigar smoke. I needed only the smells to know it was Logan, and just as well, because the silhouette ahead of me moved as silently as only he could.

“Hiya, darlin’.”

“Hello, Logan.”

He saw the box in my hands, smelled my sweat, and heard my elevated heart rate. When his eyes met mine, they were guarded, questioning, not pressing.

All I did was smile in the dark.

Logan eased me against his chest, his hand found its way into the hair at my nape, and he nuzzled my ear.

It was good to be home.

 

* * *

 

Life quickened. I sparred with Logan again, and it was a rebirth to recall the joy of what had first brought Logan and me together. He was so well trained that I rarely inflicted a serious wound, and I stopped worrying about berserking because he healed so quickly. Hours of practice settled my brain and refined my skills as sharp as my katana. I was strong again, inside and out. I expected to go back to my condo at the end of the school term. Before I left the X-Men’s cocoon of support and security, though, I resolved to confront the last things that goaded me.

First, Silver Fox. Logan’s memories of her were sweet, joyful, young, hard to believe from someone who seemed so tough and implacable. Creed’s memories were brutal, violent, chaotic, and conflicting. They still gave me nightmares. I suspected that they would until I got some answers from Logan, but that meant intruding on the most painful time of his life. After a lot of soul searching, I decided that I would ask, but if Logan couldn’t bring himself to answer, I would respect that.

I took a long walk around the beautiful grounds of the Institute to settle myself. It was a cold day, windy and heavily overcast, lonely weather for lonely contemplation. I headed inside only when it began to snow, and reached the gym just as Logan was winding up one of the children’s classes. I watched the last few minutes from the doorway. The way he moved – strength, power, and raw physicality – drew me as it always did. He wasn’t soft with the children, nor was he harsh, and there was no defensiveness in his movements or his banter. He challenged them, but without aggression. He growled more at adults.

After Logan turned the children loose, he spotted me. Only the ghost of a smile shadowed his face, but the warmth in his eyes was clear, and his body subtly changed its bearing as his pheromones encircled me. That gave me courage to venture into such a painful subject.

“Hiya, darlin’.” He looked me over with just a flicker of his eyes, and I returned the gesture. It was our silent ritual.

“Hello, Logan. Do you have some time?”

He sensed my seriousness immediately and straightened. “What’s up?”

I took a breath. “I don’t want to intrude. But I would like to ask about what I see in some of my dreams.”

“Something you got from me?” Logan asked.

I shook my head. “From Victor Creed.”

Logan stilled and his eyes met mine warily, but he didn’t walk away.

“They’re about Silver Fox,” I confirmed gently. “If you don’t want to go there, I respect that. Or if you want time to think about it, I respect that, too.”

His face tightened, but he grunted quiet acknowledgement. “What’s say we grab something from the kitchen, then find someplace to hole up?”

I agreed. Once we foraged through the kitchen, we ended up in Logan’s room. I sat cross-legged on the window seat, and Logan sprawled in the chair beside it. For a few minutes, I rearranged my chicken salad while Logan worked on roast beef sandwiches, potato salad, and beer.

“So…” Logan said once he downed the first of his three sandwiches.

I winced at Logan’s courage to start such a painful discussion. “What I got from Creed… it’s… vivid. Confusing. When Creed kidnapped us, he said he… he killed Silver Fox twice. And I do sense two versions in my nightmares. I don’t understand how….”

Logan put down his sandwich. His face was impassive for a moment, then he muttered a curse under his breath and he took a deep draught of his beer.

“Thank Weapon X,” he growled. “Ain’t snarlin’ at you, darlin’. Just the circumstances.”

He shifted uneasily and looked outside at the distant line of trees. “Your talents show you things in layers. This is like that. So first layer – Fox and I had a cabin up north. On my birthday…”

I touched his knee, trying to convey my sympathy. He nodded, took a breath.

“Second layer – fifty years later, I was on another mission with Creed – and Fox, back from the dead. I bought it out of sheer wishful thinkin’. Maybe Fox had a healing factor. Maybe they’d trashed her memories to make her think I’d betrayed her, because she hated my guts. I don’t know what was truth. Before I found out… Creed killed her again.

“Third layer – once I… got myself straight after the mission… my memories ain’t much, but I figure Fox had died fifty years earlier. She hadn’t had a healin’ factor. I’d buried her with my own hands. On the mission, her scent shoulda told me whether it was her or not, and I don’t remember a scent at all. Whoever this other woman was, Weapon X had messed with her, and Creed had killed her like he had Fox.”

I didn’t speak about how horrific both deaths had been. Logan already struggled to master his grief and uncertainty – heart rate up, respiration up, muscles tight in protest of the loss.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to have someone pry into it.”

Logan drained his beer and reached for another. “Gotta figure,” he graveled, finally looking at me, “that it ain’t easy for you to live through those memories every night.”

“You, either.”

He popped the cap off the beer bottle with a claw and took a deep pull on it. His body was tight and his hands were clenched. “Old news. What else do you need to know?”

I shook my head.

“Liar,” he murmured. “Maybe you got the big part out, but your heart ain’t slowin’ down, and you still got a knot in your gut. So what else do you need to know?”

“I don’t like hurting you, Logan,” I snapped, and instantly regretted my anger at being found out. But Logan skewered me with his sharp eyes.

“I don’t like it, either. So get on with it so you can make it up to me.”

I chuckled softly, appreciating the effort that went into the small but perverse smile that barely touched his lips. “And that involves better ways to lose sleep than nightmares, right?”

“Yup.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly, and took a deep breath. “Silver Fox wasn’t Japanese, was she?”

Logan shook his head. “Full blood Blackfoot. Why?”

“Because sometimes I see a Japanese woman. I think she’s dying. In your arms.”

Logan stilled again. “What’s she look like?”

“She’s very beautiful. She’s wearing an antique kimono. She looks like royalty. And there’s a katana that seems to have a long heritage.”

“Mariko,” Logan murmured. He grimaced and drained the rest of his second beer in a single gulp. “You’re seein’ Mariko Yashida, head of the Yashida clan. I was goin’ to marry her.”

In spare, unemotional words, Logan told me about the woman who’d been his betrothed, and how she’d been poisoned before they could be married. She’d asked Logan to spare her an agonizing death from a poison that had no antidote, and he’d used his claws to ease her pain. I didn’t need to touch Logan to feel how tightly in control he held himself as he talked. I swallowed bile, pain…

Not my rising anger at the cruel comfort that Logan had endured. I stoked it and fed it to the sleeping beast inside me.

“Thank you.” I slid off the windowsill. “I’m sorry to pry.”

I let myself out of Logan’s room. My first stop was my meditation room, where I took up Logan’s razor-sharp katana and wakizashi. Then I headed to the deepest part of the X-Men sections under the mansion, straight to the Danger Room.

Scott, Jean, and a few students were just leaving when I came up. I asked if anyone was still inside. Scott looked at me quizzically from behind his ruby crystal glasses, but Jean put her hand on his arm and shook her head. So I went inside, shut the door behind me, and switched on my internal jammer so I wouldn’t be overheard.

I punched buttons on the control panel, calling up the first of Logan’s Sabretooth bouts, the one he’d shown me months ago. The serenity of the Canadian forest surrounded me. I walked down the path, hearing only wind and the brush of evergreen needles against rough bark, waiting for the musky smell I knew would come. When I smelled it, I turned towards the tall, shadowy figure lurking in the trees. This was the first time I’d looked at his image since his death. My heart jolted.

“Looking for something, little pretty one?” Sabretooth crooned, taking his time to approach me.

“You,” I said quietly. “I killed you six months ago, but it wasn’t in a fair fight. I did it when you were down and you couldn’t defend yourself. It made me sick to kill you like that. But I’ve gotten over it.”

Sabretooth laughed as he eased towards me. “Did you, now? Poor little thing, she’s got scruples. A real bleeding heart. A liar, too. You’re too weak to kill me.”

I remembered what Logan had said about staying out of Creed’s range and backed up slowly, keeping ten meters between us. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

He looked around us at the forest and shrugged before looking back at me. “It’s your game, little pretty one. Is that why you’re here? To offer me a fair fight? To salve your conscience?”

I shook my head. “You’re not real. You’re just a hologram programmed by someone who hates you more than I do. But you’ll do until I face the real one again.”

He glowered uncertainly at me, probably because his programming didn’t know how to respond to what I’d said. “I’ll do what?”

I stopped backing up, letting Sabretooth’s avatar come closer. “Charles Xavier surely didn’t leave you dead on that river, or your own troops didn’t. So I’ll likely see your real self again. When I do, I won’t have the least compunction to kill you any way I can. So all you have to do is be what Logan programmed you to be, Victor Creed. Show me how the best way to kill you, because you deserve to die again after what you’ve done to me and a lot of other people.”

He laughed outright then, and his hands flexed as he kept coming towards me. “Uppity little bitch, aren’t you? Don’t expect me to play fair, or to let scruples get in the way of killing you. Or doing anything else to you. Won’t take long. Little things like you break so easy.”

He strolled forward, more than half a meter taller than I, sure of himself. I didn’t wait for him to attack, but sliced deeply with both blades. When he howled in outrage, his leisurely smirk vanished and he slashed at me at full speed. It wasn’t that hard to get out of his way, given my own bodily experimentation, and it drew a perverse grin from him, maybe grudging acknowledgement of my abilities. He set after me as if to get the measure of my speed, then deliberately slowed his blows as if he wanted me to exhaust myself. Then he started to talk.

It’s one thing to call what he said trash. That makes it sound like he mouthed off like a common thug looking for psychological advantage. He tried the obvious things first, telling me what he wanted to do to me. But when I kept my cool through that, when my blades continued to cut a steady stream of serious wounds up and down his body, he got more creative. He told me what he’d done to women, to Logan, in sadistic, gory detail. But I didn’t unleash the beast yet. I let him talk until I was sure that I was in control. When I was sure, then I let the beast go. This time, it didn’t swell with all-consuming, blinding rage. This rage was just as savage, but it was cold and calculated.

I anticipated Sabretooth’s blows and got there first. I chopped and hacked without giving him time to heal or get out of the way. When I had him down, I winged my wakizashi at his throat, but unlike before, this blow didn’t need a follow-up. The all-too-realistic spurt of blood that followed the arc of my blade was impressive, but I didn’t revel in it.

I ran the sim again. The second bloodbath was shorter, but it was just as savage, and I was just as controlled. To make sure, I punched the buttons again. It didn’t matter that Sabretooth was so much bigger or stronger than I. Mutant he might be, but so was I, and I wasn’t crippled by rage or a misplaced sense of honor.

When I brought Sabretooth down the third time with a slash across his abdomen complete with unspooling intestines, I sliced his head off one last time. Then I let my fury go. I thrust both blades into what was left of his torso. I grabbed his bloody mane and hurled his head far into the underbrush.

“Stay in Hell!” I howled to the trees. The sound disappeared into the faint soughing of the wind through the pines. Exhaustion overwhelmed me and I stumbled to my knees. I realized that I was splattered with gore and panting so hard that the full stench of Sabretooth’s death reeked in my nostrils. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply until my heart calmed.

A step behind me brought me instantly to my feet. I’d grabbed both blades from Sabretooth’s carcass before I realized that the intruder was Logan. He came towards me slowly, expressionless, hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets. He cast a glance at Sabretooth’s mangled body.

I followed his gaze as I lowered both blades. The ruin was savage, but I made no apology for it.

“You did that as cold as ice,” he observed.

“That was my intent.”

He looked at me, measuring. “Sure you don’t want to harry the bastard a little more? I can show you how to castrate him.”

Logan popped a claw, leaned over Sabretooth’s remains, and started to slit through his clothes.

“I know how, Logan. Stop it.”

He let Sabretooth lie as he figured out how I knew, then grimaced.

“You watched me do that. You were up in the control room, and you reprogrammed him to say those things. About what he did to you, me, the women he killed.”

Logan didn’t say anything, but his emotions told me I was right.

“You didn’t need to. I don’t feel guilty about killing him anymore.”

“In spades. You made the best of the beast, and you didn’t let me provoke you when I horned in. You done good.”

“Is that what you came in here to tell me?”

Logan shifted his stance, and scratched his chin. He punched buttons on the control panel until Creed’s mangled remains and the gore spattering me vanished, leaving only the Canadian forest to surround us with quiet. “Actually, I came in here to tell you that I don’t like hurtin’ you, either. But watchin’ you… wasn’t easy for you, but you stayed in control. I’m proud of you, Rachel-san.”

I bowed, accepting his approval. “Let’s hope I’m that good when I see him for real.”

Logan cocked his head, considering. “Maybe you oughta start wearin’ those blades full time.”

My lips pulled up perversely at the corners. “That would be socially awkward, don’t you think?”

“Never stopped Deadpool. Not that there’s any comparison between the two of you. He’s nothin’ but a nut with verbal diarrhea and blades.”

“Hmmm. I’m not certifiable quite yet, I don’t talk very much, and I don’t intend to make my blades a defining fashion statement. So you’re right – there’s no comparison between me and Wade Wilson.”

Logan’s lips curved up in a grin, baring his teeth. I’d never told him that I was quite fond of his prominent canines. When he sauntered closer, put his hands on my shoulders, and shook me gently, my lips widened in the same expression. “Damn’ straight. What you are is alpha female.”

“That ought to make Scott’s day.”

His hands found their way from my shoulders to my hips to ease me closer. “I live for those moments, darlin’. Just gotta remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Without effort he swept me up and over his shoulder and headed for the exit. “I’m alpha male.”

“Absolutely,” I laughed. “But you have to remember one thing, too.”

“Yeah?”

I found the correct rib and dug in a finger until he flinched. He flipped me into his arms proper with a glare.

I met that glare with a smile. “I’m alpha female. There’s bound to be fireworks on the days when we both have ‘tude.”

Logan grinned. “Nights oughta be something, too.”

We went back to lunch. This time, I didn’t have any trouble cleaning my plate.


End file.
